Rhipe's Stephen Parker
Former vice-president of market research at rhipe, Stephen Parker, has launched his own consultancy. Parker is now director and senior industry evangelist at his independent Cloud and financial consulting business, 1 Vision OT.
Parker told ARN he will still be working with rhipe but as a marketing consultant. Rhipe is one of 1 Vision OT’s anchor clients and Parker said he is looking to add on to that portfolio.
“A number of companies were asking me to work with them that was inconsistent with me being an employee. So I had a long chat with rhipe chief executive, Dominic O’Hanlon, about sitting on its boards and ways in which we can play this.
“Then we got to a mutual decision that I could still work with rhipe as a contractor,” he told ARN.
Parker updated his LinkedIn page to reflect the change, which also claims he has been in this position for about three months.
He outlined, on his LinkedIn profile, that in this new role, he aims to provide “low touch, high impact engagements that bring an objective, experienced and “hybrid” (business and tech) external point of view” in addition to helping clients find and deliver the value of a unique business story.
He claimed he started the company as many organisations were asking him for advice from a business transformation perspective, how to value businesses, and working with investors of various types to increase valuation.
“There are opportunities with lots of companies saying they want to get to the Cloud but have some business transformational challenges. These companies don’t want to hire a full-time person but want someone who can help them for a day or two a month over a six or 12 month period,” he said.
“Then there are some that are a bit more advanced – having a board in place already but without Cloud skills on it and want someone who can sit on the board and bring that governance to them.”
According to Parker, 1 Vision OT will enable the channel to make a transformational change that they know they want to make. “It’s because they’ll have somebody that’s not charging a huge amount of money to produce a big report; it’s more of a consumption type model.”
It will also help their transformation to the Cloud.
“In that journey, it will also help them with progress and feedback on if it’s the right thing for them to do. So, it will accelerate the channel’s ability to adopt the new Cloud business models and increase their valuations in the market,” he stated.
Initially, the company will be working across the Australian market, especially within the Sydney and Melbourne area but Parker indicated his contacts in Perth and Brisbane will enable him to work in those areas as well.
He indicated that for now, Parker will be the only one working on the 1 Vision OT brand but said he will build a team with company growth.
“Today, it is about Cloud but in the future, it will be about the Internet of Things and then the next thing after that. So the vision for the business is to build out that network of advisors,” he mentioned.
Parker has been vice-president of market research at rhipe for about seven months before launching his consultancy. Before that, he was the company’s head of Cloud strategy for more than five years.
Before that, he served a CustomRM as its founder for more than two years. Some of his other stints include working at ProcServe, IMPAQ Business Solutions, Rubus, IBM, ExxonMobil, and Inform Information Systems.
